High school has too many expectations for students. They tell us that rest is important, but have us waking up before the sun for half of the school year. They want people to join clubs, sports, and other school-related activities, but also give us extra work to do at home. It does not add up.
Here is the math. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) teens are supposed to get eight to 10 hours of sleep per night, so I will use nine hours for this example. At Gloucester High School people playing a sport will have to stay after school for around two hours, depending on the sport. School starts at 7:40. If you have to ride the bus, you will probably have to be out the door by seven. You also have to take into account getting ready, so just as an average I will say you wake up at six in the morning.
If you need nine hours of sleep and you wake up at six, you would have to be in bed by nine at night. If you do a sport, you do not leave school until around 4:40 to five P.M., this means you cannot get home until five in the evening, 5:30 at the latest. This leaves you with three and a half to four hours to shower, eat dinner, do homework, chores, and get ready for bed. For most this is not possible.
Many students stay up late to do what is required, so they do not get enough sleep. This makes no sense because the school promotes sleeping well, but also promotes sports. You could switch out sports with Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), a club, football games, or any other after school activity, but the point is still made. Honors classes’ and Advanced Placement (AP) classes’ extra work is not included in this either.
The homework that we are given varies from teacher to teacher even if they are the same classes, so some students taking the same exact class will have different work loads. You cannot control which teacher you get, so you could get three teachers that give you extra work and there is nothing you can do about it. That in itself is not fair.
You can also get credit taken away if you are sick. Being sick and having to stay home is not something you can control, and yet if you get sick too often, you could lose your grade and have to retake the class. People also have appointments, emergencies, and things going on outside of school. This is nobody’s fault, yet you can miss only 10 days of school before it becomes a problem. There are things that you can do to fix this, but why should you have to do attendance recovery or have a special doctors’ note? Does the school want you to come to school sick and spread the disease? If you have a good grade in the class and you are getting your work done, that should affect you.
The expectations, persuasions, and unreasonable requirements make high school requirements unmanageable. If you have good grades and care about school it is a challenge to do other things like act in plays, spend time with friends, or make music. The weekend is not fully open to do these things either because people are practicing for their sport or club, catching up on sleep, and doing things with their family.
School has been the same for too long and despite mountains of research saying it should change. Highschool needs to lower the requirements and expectations of students.
